The girls are again with their dad today while my SIL and nephew went to church. The girls’ dad is trying to make up for lost time and he has been out with them every weekend and on their birthday. He knew he has little time left before we leave QC for good. Once we’re there, it would be more difficult for him to spend time with the girls on a whim.

It’s only now that the reality is sinking in for him.

🤷‍♀️

Well, he wasted 11 years and it’s only now that he realized that he has not spent quality time with them.

What an idiot.

When I was trying to arrange something special like lunch at a hotel or cook something extra for the girls’ birthday, Twin I said that there is no need for me to do that. “It’s just a birthday,” she said.

I admonished her. “Don’t try to make yourself small and think that you’re not special, that you don’t deserve this. That’s wrong.”

I continued. “I thought the same way all my life and look where I ended up. Darling, if you don’t believe you are special to people who love you and you don’t deserve these little things like celebrating your birthday, you will think your entire life that you don’t deserve the good things that come your way. That you will just accept things the way they are because you think you don’t deserve better outcomes. You will just accept crappy treatment from people; you will always think you don’t deserve love and that whatever comes your way will be the best thing that you will ever have.”

“Don’t think that way,” I said. “That’s why I ended up with bad men. I just accepted whatever crumbs they gave me and I thought going the extra 1,000 miles would make them love me. That’s not how it works, anak.”

“And I’m doing this for your birthday because you are special. Because you are my daughters. Because I love you, OK?” I said with finality.

I hope she takes this to heart because that nugget of wisdom I imparted to her would have made a big difference in my life if only my mother taught me that. But no, she taught me the opposite: how to be small to accommodate a person who doesn’t want to grow up.

She told us children that we just have to adjust to my father and understand why he is a drunkard. Why he became a raving lunatic whenever he came home drunk, which was often. We children had to lock ourselves in our rooms and cower in our beds when we hear his big motorbike, when we smell alcohol—because that’s all that we can do.

She told me not to complain about our husbands and talk to others about their negative traits. Do not make them look bad to other people. Absorb all of these because we must love them.

Lord God, she basically told me to accept the emotional abuse. Which I did.

They were so toxic, these lessons imparted to me by this supposedly very intelligent woman. It’s only now, after graduating from therapy, did I learn that these are very damaging. It’s only now did I learn those are the words uttered by a co-dependent wife, trying to excuse the abominable treatment from a man who is supposed to love and cherish her and her children.

It’s a complicated thing, but this is what I know: narcissism + co-dependency = recipe for disaster. I received little affection from a narcissistic father and I never felt special. I always had to chase his affection, like trying to make good drawings but I didn’t measure up. He told me they were bad. So I drew in silence.

All my life I had to chase the affection of narcissistic men, happy with the crumbs they were leaving me. Ignoring the others who were ready to lay the red carpet for me. I don’t know why I didn’t gravitate towards them; I just went after the ones who didn’t treat me right.

No one taught me the things that I just told Twin I. I had to learn the very hard way.